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TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) Yazan, a 1-year-old Libyan boy, was born with congenital heart disease. With just one chamber, the organ pumped so little blood that when Yazan cried, his skin turned black. Without surgery, he would not survive.

But Yazans country, Libya, has only one heart surgeon who cant possibly perform surgeries on 1,200 or so infants born every year with heart defects. Of those, typically some 150 are in dire need of surgery and die in their first year, said William Novick, an American pediatric cardiac surgeon.

His international team of experts, part of the Novick Cardiac Alliance, regularly flies into Libya to perform surgery on patients like Yazan.

To me this is simply an unacceptable situation that needs our attention, said Novick, who lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

The medical trips help prop up Libyas fragile health care system, which the World Health Organization has described as overburdened, inefficient and short of medicine and equipment.

Libya has been plunged into chaos since 2011, when a civil war toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. Eastern-based opposition forces attacked Tripoli last spring to wrest it from control of the weak U.N.-backed government. The fierce round of fighting has killed hundreds of civilians, including at least 13 children since mid-January.

Novicks team was the best, and perhaps last, hope for Yazan. But that meant his family had to travel to the most dangerous place in the war-ravaged country the capital Tripoli, where the Tajoura National Heart Center is located.

Yazans odyssey from his small desert hometown barely skirted the wars front lines. With key highways blocked because of fighting, his family took a 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) detour.

You cant come to Tripoli like before, said Yazans father, Im Saleh Mohamed Abudulfetah.

On Feb. 26, Yazans perilous trek culminated in a five-hour surgery. Yazan is one of 1,000 children treated by Novicks group since it first came to Libya after the 2011 uprising.

In the operating room, Novick and his team chatted calmly as they cut open Yazans chest. They sewed together two large veins carrying blood from Yazans head and connected them to his pulmonary artery. That sent oxygenated blood straight to his lungs.

Eventually, exhausted nurses wheeled Yazan out of the operating theater, his tiny body covered in bandages and tubes, to tell his parents the news. They expected Yazan to recover well, and with a follow-up operation, live a normal life.

Under the fluorescent light of the intensive care unit, Abudulfetah touched his babys soft hair, murmuring words of prayer. Yazans belly rose and fell with steady breath. His cheeks were even flushed a subtle pink.

As a young medical resident at the University of Alabama, Novick, now 66, witnessed the suffering of children with congenital heart disease and the staggering disparities in health services. He became determined to try to give children with heart problems the care they need, no matter where theyre born.

While still a resident, Novick began recruiting experts to help him trek to places where treatable heart disease means death due to a shortage of specialists and other restrictions.

Over nearly three decades, Novick and his colleagues have made hundreds of trips to 32 countries including Ukraine, Nigeria, Iraq, Iran and Columbia.

Novicks Libya team in February consisted of 20 volunteers: cardiologists, surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists. The Associated Press accompanied them as they performed 10 complex open-heart surgeries in the countrys west. The group flies home from Tripoli next week after completing dozens more operations.

Political power in Libya today is divided between the two rival governments in the east and west of the country and a patchwork of armed groups and foreign countries that support either administration.

Were on both sides of the conflict zone, said Novick. And that is a specific goal of ours, to be apolitical and help the children.

Novicks group not only drops in a few times a year, but also trains Libyan doctors and nurses to build up the countrys critical health care system.

Were not going to be here forever and we shouldnt be here forever, he said.

More here:
US heart surgeon treats children lacking care in Libya's war - The Associated Press

By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV and FELIPE DANAAssociated Press

TRIPOLI, Libya - Yazan, a 1-year-old Libyan boy, was born with congenital heart disease. With just one chamber, the organ pumped so little blood that when Yazan cried, his skin turned black. Without surgery, he would not survive.

But Yazan's country, Libya, has only one heart surgeon who can't possibly perform surgeries on 1,200 or so infants born every year with heart defects. Of those, typically some 150 are in dire need of surgery and die in their first year, said William Novick, an American pediatric cardiac surgeon.

His international team of experts, part of the Novick Cardiac Alliance, regularly flies into Libya to perform surgery on patients like Yazan.

"To me this is simply an unacceptable situation that needs our attention," said Novick, who lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

The medical trips help prop up Libya's fragile health care system, which the World Health Organization has described as overburdened, inefficient and short of medicine and equipment.

Libya has been plunged into chaos since 2011, when a civil war toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. Eastern-based opposition forces attacked Tripoli last spring to wrest it from control of the weak U.N.-backed government. The fierce round of fighting has killed hundreds of civilians, including at least 13 children since mid-January.

Novick's team was the best, and perhaps last, hope for Yazan. But that meant his family had to travel to the most dangerous place in the war-ravaged country - the capital Tripoli, where the Tajoura National Heart Center is located.

Yazan's odyssey from his small desert hometown barely skirted the war's front lines. With key highways blocked because of fighting, his family took a 932-mile detour.

"You can't come to Tripoli like before," said Yazan's father, Im Saleh Mohamed Abudulfetah.

On Feb. 26, Yazan's perilous trek culminated in a five-hour surgery. Yazan is one of 1,000 children treated by Novick's group since it first came to Libya after the 2011 uprising.

In the operating room, Novick and his team chatted calmly as they cut open Yazan's chest. They sewed together two large veins carrying blood from Yazan's head and connected them to his pulmonary artery. That sent oxygenated blood straight to his lungs.

Eventually, exhausted nurses wheeled Yazan out of the operating theater, his tiny body covered in bandages and tubes, to tell his parents the news. They expected Yazan to recover well, and with a follow-up operation, live a normal life.

Under the fluorescent light of the intensive care unit, Abudulfetah touched his baby's soft hair, murmuring words of prayer. Yazan's belly rose and fell with steady breath. His cheeks were even flushed a subtle pink.

As a young medical resident at the University of Alabama, Novick, now 66, witnessed the suffering of children with congenital heart disease and the staggering disparities in health services. He became determined to try to give children with heart problems the care they need, no matter where they're born.

While still a resident, Novick began recruiting experts to help him trek to places where treatable heart disease means death due to a shortage of specialists and other restrictions.

Over nearly three decades, Novick and his colleagues have made hundreds of trips to 32 countries including Ukraine, Nigeria, Iraq, Iran and Colombia.

Novick's Libya team in February consisted of 20 volunteers: cardiologists, surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists. The Associated Press accompanied them as they performed 10 complex open-heart surgeries in the country's west. The group flies home from Tripoli next week after completing dozens more operations.

Political power in Libya today is divided between the two rival governments in the east and west of the country and a patchwork of armed groups and foreign countries that support either administration.

"We're on both sides of the conflict zone," said Novick. "And that is a specific goal of ours, to be apolitical and help the children."

Novick's group not only drops in a few times a year, but also trains Libyan doctors and nurses to build up the country's critical health care system.

"We're not going to be here forever, and we shouldn't be here forever," he said.

See the original post:
U.S. heart surgeon, team treat children lacking care in Libya - Sumter Item

In mid-February, round 300 migrants were intercepted at sea by the Libyan coast guard and transferred to a detention center at Sharah Zawiya, in the south of Libya's capital Tripoli. The center has been open for at least a year. Recently, it has been taken under the control of the UN-backed government and has become accessible to the IOM.

Is thecenter at Sharah Zawiya a hidden detention center, a transit center, or acenter for inquiry? These are the questions that many Libyan observersare now asking themselves. As the IOM has recently gained access to the center, InfoMigrants set out to find out a bit more about what might be going on in the center itself.

TheInternational Organization for Migration (IOM) told InfoMigrants that manybelieve the center is a place of transit. Migrants are intercepted at sea andsent to this structure before undergoing an interview and then being sent to anofficial detention center.

"In theory," clarified the IOM, "migrants are not meant to stay there longer than 48 hours."

'I stayed therefor more than three months'

However,several migrants who have been in contact with InfoMigrants claim to have spentmuch more than two days in the center. They also say they have never been interviewed, so it turns into more of a de facto detention center. "I stayed at least three months there last summer,before I finally managed to escape," said Ali, an 18-year-old from Guinea whois still living in Libya. "During the whole time I was there, they didnt askme one question."

Aliexplained that when he arrived, the guards would strip the migrants. "They tookeverything we had, especially our telephones and our money." Ibrahim, anotheryoung man from Guinea, who is 17-years-old and also managed to escape thecenter last weekend, soon after being brought there, tells a similar story. "Theyforced me to give them my telephone and the 100 I had on me," he sighs.

Ali saysthat the Libyans demand a ransom from those wishing to leave the center. Sumscan go up to around 3,000 dinars (or about 1,950), he says. "A man, anAfrican, he brought telephones so that we could contact our families and wecould ask them for money. Another man, an Arab, would then pick up the moneythat they demanded." Ali lists the frequent blows migrants suffered "for noreason" and the rationing of food within the center. "There would be a tiny bitof bread between three people each morning and a plate of pasta at about six inthe evening."

Accordingto InfoMigrants' research, the center itself opened about a year ago and wasclosed down temporarily for a few months at the end of 2019. It then re-openedlast week to house the 300 intercepted migrants. Apparently a change in themanagement at the center was the cause of the temporary closure.

Have therebeen changes to the organization?

So did thechange in the management result in a change in the way the center functions?Ali explains that he managed to escape sometime around October, after threemonths of detention. He was helped in his escape, he says, by the old guard atthe center. "The Libyans who were running the center then told us we shouldleave because a new boss was arriving. The old boss and the new one didn'tagree; things got so bad that their teams were shooting at each other as we allescaped."

The IOMsays that it wasnt authorized to enter the center until last week. "Previously,the place was run by the Ministry of the Interior, but recently, the DCIM (Thedepartment responsible for the fight against illegal migration) has retakencontrol," IOM told InfoMigrants.

Ibrahimsays that he wasn't asked for money before being allowed to leave. The peoplewho were intercepted at sea on February 18, were transferred, however, to thedetention center at Zawia on Saturday where a ransom from 2,000 dinars or1,300 was asked of every person who wanted to leave.

Read this article:
Libya: What is really going on in an 'inquiry center' in Tripoli? - InfoMigrants

LONDON - The conviction of the only man ever found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing has been referred for an appeal to Scotland's High Court, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said on Wednesday.

Pam Am flight 103 was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 en route from London to New York, an attack that killed 270 people, mostly Americans on their way home for Christmas.

In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was jailed for life after being found guilty of carrying out the attack. He died in Libya in 2012 after being released three years earlier by Scotland's government on compassionate grounds following a diagnosis of terminal cancer.

Chairman of the Commission Bill Matthews said it was the second time they had reviewed Megrahi's conviction. "We note that since our last review further information has become available, including within the public domain, which the Commission has now been able to consider and assess," he said in a statement.

"I am satisfied that the matter is now returning to the appropriate forum the appeal court to consider fully all of the issues raised in our statement of reasons."

Read more from the original source:
Scottish Court to Hear Posthumous Appeal of Libyan Lockerbie Bomber - VOA News

The chairman of the Turkey-Libya Council of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey, Murtaza Karanfil.[Photo: Social Media]Anadolu Agency has reported the chairman of the Turkey-Libya Council of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEIK) on Thursday as saying that Turkish investors should harness Libyas $120 billion investment volume especially in the contracting sector.

There is a call from Libya in this direction, said Murtaza Karanfil, adding that Libya was undergoing a reconstruction process and that there were major opportunities in all of the countrys sectors.

During the reconstruction process, houses, public buildings and roads will be rebuilt in Libya, said Karanfil, according to Anadolu Agency.

Turkey exports a wide variety of products to Libya including jewelry, furniture, poultry, carpets, semi-finished steel, hygienic towel, diaper, vegetable fixed oil, plastic profile, plastic packaging materials, medicine and clothing.

Due to difficulties in the country where Turkish contractors had undertaken their first overseas projects projects worth $19 billion remain unfinished, Karanfil indicated.

Karanfil explained that Turkish contractors currently had a total of $4 billion in receivables due to losses including collateral, machinery and equipment.

With an agreement to be signed between the two countries, we expect serious progress in the resolution of commercial problems in the coming period in contracting, he added.

We believe that as soon as we resolve the old issues on receivables, we will take things from where we left off in Libya and move them to much better points, Karanfil said.

Referring to the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the Chinese economy, he said Chinas share in Libyas imports is around 13%.

We [Turkey] can well turn Chinas share in Libya and African countries to our favor using the advantages of our geopolitical location and by correct process management, he explained.

Karanfil also said that Turkeys exports to Libya exceeded $2 billion in 2012 and peaked before declining due to political upheaval in the country.

Exports increased again in 2017 and reached $1.9 billion in 2019, with an increase of 29% compared to the previous year, Karanfil added.

See the original post:
Turkey sets eyes on $120 billion investment volume in Libya - Libyan Express